Baylee Barckley’s final chapter
4/20/2019 1:23:00 AM | Golf
It all started simply enough. A grandfather living in a golf community in Southern California, not far from his daughter, her husband and their daughter.
Most evenings he'd show up with his golf cart, wait for his five-year-old granddaughter to climb in, and off they'd go to explore the quiet grounds of the Canyon Lake Golf & Country Club.
He was a golfer, but he had no designs on transferring that love to his granddaughter. She was only five after all. Their nightly goals: spot bunnies, find lost golf balls, laugh and love their time together.
But what if, just for fun, he put a 5-iron in her hands one evening, rolled a few balls onto the fairway, pointed to a far-off target and gave her just one directive: grip it and rip it.
Would there be any harm in that?
And the Baylee Barckley story, the one that is coming to an end this weekend at the Big Sky Conference women's golf championship in Boulder City, Nevada, at least the latest chapter anyway, had its start.
"There was no looking back. It was all over at that point," says her dad, Randy, who will be one of a dozen extended family members walking the grounds of the Boulder Creek Golf Club this weekend.
She tried everything else: soccer, basketball, volleyball, even karate. But nothing connected with her the way golf did. It was the simplicity of the game, a girl, armed with her clubs and a ball, against the course.
Team sports were fun, but this was self-reliance at its most basic. You need to make the shot. You need to make the putt. You need to hit it down the middle. There were no teammates to fall back upon.
When she was alone: two-ball, worst-ball. Hit two for the practice, play the position of the worst ball for the challenge of scrambling to make par.
When she was with her grandpa: just as you'd expect. Old men with old-men, country-club views, gathered around the tee box, wondering why kids had to be allowed on the course. Even worse, a girl.
"Then I'd rip it down the fairway and they'd be, Wow," says Barckley. "My grandpa would be, Yeah, shut up." Big hitter that Baylee.
It was all enough to get Randy started on the sport a dozen years ago. Four decades being golf-free. Now he thinks it's the best sport ever created.
Though that maybe wasn't true when his daughter was 11 and the last one to play her second shot off the tee. It's just that she kept putting it farther down the fairway than everyone else. Even the guys.
"She started playing with me and my neighbor," he says. "It wasn't long before we had to move her back to the men's tees, because she was outdriving us." She was in the fifth grade.
"She got to be a little hero around our home course. Everybody knew who Baylee was."
She was in the right place for someone who shows promise in a sport: Southern California, where entire industries have emerged to turn the dreams of youth into reality.
"I started getting her some lessons, put her in a junior program, and it took off from there," says Randy. "She just got better, better and better."
There was the time she qualified for a tournament in North Carolina. Had a host family, had a caddy, had to make the cut after two days to play the last two, just like the pros.
And it was a pro -- a legend, Nancy Lopez -- with whom she spent more than four star-struck hours sharing a golf cart while playing the junior tournament that was paired with the ANA Inspiration.
But, in golf, the numbers don't lie, nor do the results. She would dominate when she was playing for Temescal Canyon High, not as much when it came to junior tournaments.
No shame in that. She was going up against some of the best age-group competition in the world. And it kept her grounded when she began looking at colleges.
She put together a swing video, then did her research before sending it out. What was the makeup of the team? What kind of scores were the players shooting? What would be a good fit?
"You kind of have to recognize that when you're a golfer. You've got to be humble about it and know where your place is," she says.
"I knew I was good, but I wasn't great. I didn't want to be a little fish in a big pond. I wanted to be an average fish with all my other teammates."
And it was going to be in California. Southern California, near her extended family. Okay, maybe Arizona. But for someone who'd rather play in 105 degrees than 50, it was going to be someplace warm.
It was probably hot that week in Las Vegas. She had already won the first junior tournament. Now she was one round into the next. And there was a lady who kept following her around the course.
"I saw this coach with a Montana shirt on. I remember thinking, I'm not going to Montana," she said this week, at the end of her four years as a Grizzly.
Even for a girl from Southern California, September can be the month when western Montana puts on her most seductive dress.
There is a hint of cool in the air. The leaves are just starting to change colors, the prelude to a change in seasons mostly lost on a place like Canyon Lake. The hook had been set.
"My dad and I were on the plane heading back home and I was like, I really like that school, Dad," she recalls. But there was more. It goes back to self-reliance, of what turned her onto golf in the first place.
"People told me that life does not start until you live outside your comfort zone. That's what I did coming here. I'm very glad I did. I think I learned a lot about myself."
That coach? The one who convinced her to at least take a visit? That was Joni Stephens. She would be gone before Barckley arrived on campus. She resigned the summer before Barckley's freshman year.
She met her new coach, Matt Higgins, the day she arrived on campus and went to his office to introduce herself.
But talent is talent. Even with a coaching change, Barckley, no average fish, at least in this pond, led Montana in scoring as a freshman at 77.76.
The Big Sky Championship in the spring of 2016 was only going to be the start. She tied for fifth as a freshman, shooting rounds of 72, 73 and 72 to give the Grizzlies their highest finisher since 2011.
But over Christmas break, when Barckley was a sophomore, her grandpa, the one who had ushered her into the sport, passed away. A light had been extinguished.
"That was rough. I didn't really want to play golf at all," she says. "I didn't practice at all that break. He wasn't there to watch me and be with me, so it wasn't something I wanted to do."
There were nearly as many tournament rounds in the 80s (7) that spring as there were in the 70s (8). Her mood was overcast for all of it. She tied for 37th at the Big Sky Championship.
Then: the first Battle at Old Works in Anaconda in the fall of 2017. Barckley, then a junior, opened with a 2-under 70. With everyone gunning for the leader, she went 72-72 for her first collegiate win.
"That changed my mentality. I said, You know what? I'm doing this for him from now on. It's been my mentality ever since," she says.
She had a scoring average of 76.87 as a junior and has dropped that to 76.18 as a senior, while leading a young squad forward in a way that likely has her grandpa beaming with pride.
Now the end approaches, of this chapter at least. She'll play her final round as a Grizzly on Sunday, then graduate next month before returning to Southern California, where she probably belongs.
Her dad will be there, walking the course as he's allowed, with her in spirit if not right there in body. He's only missed a few of her tournaments in her collegiate career.
"There has always been another one, so it's kind of a surreal moment when there isn't another one," he says. "It's going to be tough for me.
"Her golf was my life until we dropped her off freshman year. That was a real tough moment for me. Now this is almost over, and it's pretty emotional as well."
It puts her in a tough position this weekend. Oh, how she wants to just enjoy it, to get every moment of fun out of it she can. But there is a competitor inside of her too. And why couldn't she be top five again?
It was the former attitude she played with at the Red Rocks Invitational last month, when she shot rounds of 68, 72 and 73. But that was two tournaments ago. The end wasn't bearing down at full speed.
That's the paradox of golf, isn't it? That the harder you try, the worse it usually goes?
"I don't want to put so much pressure on myself. I just want to enjoy these three rounds. That's the mentality I had at (Red Rocks), and I shot my best collegiate golf round," she says.
"I just want to enjoy it. I've had four years of great experiences, and I just want to end it by having some fun. That's how I need to approach it. That's when I play my best."
When she grips it. Then rips it. With a never-to-be-forgotten grandpa nodding in delight.
Most evenings he'd show up with his golf cart, wait for his five-year-old granddaughter to climb in, and off they'd go to explore the quiet grounds of the Canyon Lake Golf & Country Club.
He was a golfer, but he had no designs on transferring that love to his granddaughter. She was only five after all. Their nightly goals: spot bunnies, find lost golf balls, laugh and love their time together.
But what if, just for fun, he put a 5-iron in her hands one evening, rolled a few balls onto the fairway, pointed to a far-off target and gave her just one directive: grip it and rip it.
Would there be any harm in that?
And the Baylee Barckley story, the one that is coming to an end this weekend at the Big Sky Conference women's golf championship in Boulder City, Nevada, at least the latest chapter anyway, had its start.
"There was no looking back. It was all over at that point," says her dad, Randy, who will be one of a dozen extended family members walking the grounds of the Boulder Creek Golf Club this weekend.
She tried everything else: soccer, basketball, volleyball, even karate. But nothing connected with her the way golf did. It was the simplicity of the game, a girl, armed with her clubs and a ball, against the course.
Team sports were fun, but this was self-reliance at its most basic. You need to make the shot. You need to make the putt. You need to hit it down the middle. There were no teammates to fall back upon.
When she was alone: two-ball, worst-ball. Hit two for the practice, play the position of the worst ball for the challenge of scrambling to make par.
When she was with her grandpa: just as you'd expect. Old men with old-men, country-club views, gathered around the tee box, wondering why kids had to be allowed on the course. Even worse, a girl.
"Then I'd rip it down the fairway and they'd be, Wow," says Barckley. "My grandpa would be, Yeah, shut up." Big hitter that Baylee.
It was all enough to get Randy started on the sport a dozen years ago. Four decades being golf-free. Now he thinks it's the best sport ever created.
Though that maybe wasn't true when his daughter was 11 and the last one to play her second shot off the tee. It's just that she kept putting it farther down the fairway than everyone else. Even the guys.
"She started playing with me and my neighbor," he says. "It wasn't long before we had to move her back to the men's tees, because she was outdriving us." She was in the fifth grade.
"She got to be a little hero around our home course. Everybody knew who Baylee was."
She was in the right place for someone who shows promise in a sport: Southern California, where entire industries have emerged to turn the dreams of youth into reality.
"I started getting her some lessons, put her in a junior program, and it took off from there," says Randy. "She just got better, better and better."
There was the time she qualified for a tournament in North Carolina. Had a host family, had a caddy, had to make the cut after two days to play the last two, just like the pros.
And it was a pro -- a legend, Nancy Lopez -- with whom she spent more than four star-struck hours sharing a golf cart while playing the junior tournament that was paired with the ANA Inspiration.
But, in golf, the numbers don't lie, nor do the results. She would dominate when she was playing for Temescal Canyon High, not as much when it came to junior tournaments.
No shame in that. She was going up against some of the best age-group competition in the world. And it kept her grounded when she began looking at colleges.
She put together a swing video, then did her research before sending it out. What was the makeup of the team? What kind of scores were the players shooting? What would be a good fit?
"You kind of have to recognize that when you're a golfer. You've got to be humble about it and know where your place is," she says.
"I knew I was good, but I wasn't great. I didn't want to be a little fish in a big pond. I wanted to be an average fish with all my other teammates."
And it was going to be in California. Southern California, near her extended family. Okay, maybe Arizona. But for someone who'd rather play in 105 degrees than 50, it was going to be someplace warm.
It was probably hot that week in Las Vegas. She had already won the first junior tournament. Now she was one round into the next. And there was a lady who kept following her around the course.
"I saw this coach with a Montana shirt on. I remember thinking, I'm not going to Montana," she said this week, at the end of her four years as a Grizzly.
Even for a girl from Southern California, September can be the month when western Montana puts on her most seductive dress.
There is a hint of cool in the air. The leaves are just starting to change colors, the prelude to a change in seasons mostly lost on a place like Canyon Lake. The hook had been set.
"My dad and I were on the plane heading back home and I was like, I really like that school, Dad," she recalls. But there was more. It goes back to self-reliance, of what turned her onto golf in the first place.
"People told me that life does not start until you live outside your comfort zone. That's what I did coming here. I'm very glad I did. I think I learned a lot about myself."
That coach? The one who convinced her to at least take a visit? That was Joni Stephens. She would be gone before Barckley arrived on campus. She resigned the summer before Barckley's freshman year.
She met her new coach, Matt Higgins, the day she arrived on campus and went to his office to introduce herself.
But talent is talent. Even with a coaching change, Barckley, no average fish, at least in this pond, led Montana in scoring as a freshman at 77.76.
The Big Sky Championship in the spring of 2016 was only going to be the start. She tied for fifth as a freshman, shooting rounds of 72, 73 and 72 to give the Grizzlies their highest finisher since 2011.
But over Christmas break, when Barckley was a sophomore, her grandpa, the one who had ushered her into the sport, passed away. A light had been extinguished.
"That was rough. I didn't really want to play golf at all," she says. "I didn't practice at all that break. He wasn't there to watch me and be with me, so it wasn't something I wanted to do."
There were nearly as many tournament rounds in the 80s (7) that spring as there were in the 70s (8). Her mood was overcast for all of it. She tied for 37th at the Big Sky Championship.
Then: the first Battle at Old Works in Anaconda in the fall of 2017. Barckley, then a junior, opened with a 2-under 70. With everyone gunning for the leader, she went 72-72 for her first collegiate win.
"That changed my mentality. I said, You know what? I'm doing this for him from now on. It's been my mentality ever since," she says.
She had a scoring average of 76.87 as a junior and has dropped that to 76.18 as a senior, while leading a young squad forward in a way that likely has her grandpa beaming with pride.
Now the end approaches, of this chapter at least. She'll play her final round as a Grizzly on Sunday, then graduate next month before returning to Southern California, where she probably belongs.
Her dad will be there, walking the course as he's allowed, with her in spirit if not right there in body. He's only missed a few of her tournaments in her collegiate career.
"There has always been another one, so it's kind of a surreal moment when there isn't another one," he says. "It's going to be tough for me.
"Her golf was my life until we dropped her off freshman year. That was a real tough moment for me. Now this is almost over, and it's pretty emotional as well."
It puts her in a tough position this weekend. Oh, how she wants to just enjoy it, to get every moment of fun out of it she can. But there is a competitor inside of her too. And why couldn't she be top five again?
It was the former attitude she played with at the Red Rocks Invitational last month, when she shot rounds of 68, 72 and 73. But that was two tournaments ago. The end wasn't bearing down at full speed.
That's the paradox of golf, isn't it? That the harder you try, the worse it usually goes?
"I don't want to put so much pressure on myself. I just want to enjoy these three rounds. That's the mentality I had at (Red Rocks), and I shot my best collegiate golf round," she says.
"I just want to enjoy it. I've had four years of great experiences, and I just want to end it by having some fun. That's how I need to approach it. That's when I play my best."
When she grips it. Then rips it. With a never-to-be-forgotten grandpa nodding in delight.
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